Podcast
The Archive Project
Hosted by Literary Arts · EN
In partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting, Literary Arts is building a retrospective of some of the most engaging talks from the world’s best writers over the first 40 years of Portland Arts & Lectures in Portland.
26episodes
Episodes
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Emma Donoghue in conversation (Rebroadcast)
2w ago00:56:38Tap to summarizeIn this episode, we feature the beloved Irish novelist Emma Donoghue, in conversation with OPB’s Crystal Ligori, from the 2025 Portland Book Festival. Emma Donoghue has extraordinary range, writing for the screen, and the stage, as well as authoring many acclaimed novels. Her international bestseller Room was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes, and it is what brought her fame and readers all over the world. She joined us on stage to discuss The Paris Express, a novel based on an 1895 disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs. It’s a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train’s crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more. Emma Donoghue is the author of sixteen novels, including the award-winning national bestseller Room, the basis for the acclaimed film of the same name. Her latest novel is The Paris Express. She has also written the screenplays for Room and The Wonder and nine stage plays. Her next film (adapted with Philippa Lowthorpe from Helen Macdonald’s memoir) is H Is for Hawk. Born in Dublin, she lives in Ontario with her family. As one of the local hosts of OPB’s “All Things Considered”, Crystal Ligori seeks out unique stories from diverse communities, often focusing on food systems, pop culture, and LGBTQ+ communities. She also narrates OPB’s Emmy-award winning documentary food series “Superabundant” and was the longtime producer/editor for Literary Arts’ weekly radio program and podcast “Literary Arts: The Archive Project”. Before joining OPB, Crystal was a host at KUFO in Portland, OR, KZZU in Spokane, WA and KBGA in Missoula, MT. Her work has been heard nationally on NPR Newscasts, APM’s “Marketplace”, PRX’s “Living on Earth,” and NPR’s “All Things Considered”. An alumna of the School of Journalism at the University of Montana, she has three SPJ awards for television feature reporting and LGBTQ+ Equity Reporting in audio, a Hearst Journalism Award for broadcast news radio features, and shares three regional Emmy awards for her work on Superabundant.
Transcribe →Jill Lepore (Rebroadcast)
2w ago01:00:20Tap to summarizeJill Lepore is a Harvard professor and contributing writer to the New Yorker. Her books include The Secret History of Wonder Woman, New York Burning, These Truths: A History of the United States, and her latest, We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution – and instant New York Times bestseller. This year is the semi-quincentennial of the United States of America and, as Lepore points out, also the anniversary of constitutionalism. There’s no better guide through American history than Jill Lepore, and it is a delight to spend an hour in civics class led by someone who readily references Mel Brooks and AI in a discussion about the Constitution. Lepore is interviewed by OPB’s Geoff Norcross, host of All Things Considered. They discuss Lepore’s Amendments Project, which catalogues all the amendments that have been proposed throughout history, and explore why it is so difficult to amend the Constitution and the story of how some of the amendments we do have (there are 27, including the 10 in the Bill of Rights) came to be. They talk about originalism and the pessimism of the framers, who believed that any man would be a tyrant if given power, and set up the checks and balances in our Constitution to give the legislature, the court, and the people – with the vote – the power to oust a tyrant. A few notes to listeners just for clarity: It’s mentioned “what is Congress doing right now,” this was during the November 2025 government shut down. Jill is not in the room with the audience; Jill was unable to join us in Portland due to a last-minute travel issue (related to the shut down, frankly), but very gamely came in on video while Geoff Norcross and the audience were in the theater. Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker. As a wide-ranging and prolific essayist, and winner of the PEN prize for the Art of the Essay, Lepore writes about American history, law, literature, and politics. She is the author of many award-winning books, including the international bestseller, These Truths: A History of the United States (2018). Her newest book is We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, which was published this September. As one of the local hosts of OPB’s “All Things Considered,” Geoff Norcross shares local and regional stories to audiences of NPR’s flagship newsmagazine. Previously, Geoff was the host of OPB’s “Morning Edition” for 15 years. He was part of the team that built the program into one of the most listened-to presentations of “Morning Edition” in the country.
Transcribe →Jasmine Guillory and Adib Khorram (Rebroadcast)
4w ago00:52:36Tap to summarizeIf you like Heated Rivalry – if you don’t, you’re the only one, but anyway – if you like Heated Rivalry and want more queer romance but wish it had more wine, we’ve got the books for you. This week’s conversation is features queer romance at the 2025 Portland Book Festival, with authors Jasmine Guillory, Adib Khorram, and moderator Anita Kelly. Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling author of Drunk on Love, The Wedding Date, and The Proposal. A frequent contributor to The Today Show, she was at the festival for her first queer romance, Flirting Lessons. Adib Khorram is the author of I’ll Have What He’s Having and YA novel Darius The Great Is Not Okay. He serves on the board of directors for Authors Against Book Bans. He was at the festival for his adult romance book is It Had To Be Him. The event is moderated by Portland author Anita Kelly, author of How You Get The Girl and Donut Summer. Both books, Flirting Lessons and It Had To Be Him, involve escape – to Napa and to Milan, respectively – and the authors talk about the arduous research process of drinking a lot of wine. Jasmine speaks about writing a book as a way to learn about something she’s curious about – in her case the wine business and living in what is thought of as a tourist town, like Napa. And Adib describes a rosé-fueled semi-spontaneous trip to Italy for eight weeks, and how the pursuit of joy inspired his process. Romance is hot right now, and the conversation is very fun, but a heads up that it is a spicy conversation! There are a few bleeps, and portions might not for all ages or all ears. The episode includes content that might not be suitable for all audiences – and it’s unbleeped! Listener discretion is advised. Jasmine Guillory is a New York Times bestselling author. Her novels include Drunk on Love, The Wedding Date, the Reese’s Book Club selection The Proposal. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Bon Appetit, and Time. Jasmine is a frequent book contributor on the Today show. She lives in Oakland, California. Adib Khorram is the queer Iranian author of I’ll Have What He’s Having, which was an instant USA Today bestseller. He is also the author of the young adult novel Darius the Great Is Not Okay, which earned the William C. Morris Debut Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature, and a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor, and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Best YA Novels of All Time; his other young adult novels Darius the Great Deserves Better, Kiss & Tell, and The Breakup Lists as well as the picture books Seven Special Somethings: A Nowruz Story and Bijan Always Wins, have garnered critical acclaim, starred reviews, and bestsellers. He grew up in Kansas City—the Milan of the Midwest—but he’d rather be in the real thing, sitting on a patio, enjoying an aperitivo. Originally from a small town in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, Anita Kelly now lives in the Pacific Northwest with their family. An educator by day, they write romance that celebrates queer love in all its infinite possibilities. They hope you get to pet a dog today.
Transcribe →Better Worlds: A Panel on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Legacy (Rebroadcast)
Jun 2200:53:55Tap to summarizeIn this episode of The Archive Project, we feature a discussion on late writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s legacy of pacifism and environmentalism. Our moderator is Theo Downes-Le Guin, Ursula’s son and literary executor. Theo is in conversation with Oregon-based writers Juhea Kim, author of the novel Beasts of a Little Land, a finalist for the 2022 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Michelle Ruiz Keil, author most recently of the young adult novel Summer in the City of Roses, which was a finalist for the inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. In her speech at the 2014 National Book Awards, accepting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Ursula said: “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope.” Juhea Kim and Michelle Ruiz Keil are two of those voices that we need now. In this conversation, Juhea and Michelle discuss how they came—and returned—to Le Guin’s work, her influence on their writing, and how they are carrying her legacy forward, including the responsibility of the artist as a humanitarian. This conversation was recorded in front of a live audience at Literary Arts on July 15, 2022. “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was a celebrated author whose body of work includes 23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebula Awards, seven Hugo Awards, and SFWA’s Grand Master, along with the PEN/Malamud and many other awards. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America. Michelle Ruiz Keil is an author, playwright, and tarot reader with an eye for the enchanted and way with animals. She is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult novels All of Us With Wings and Summer In The City of Roses. Her writing for adults can be found most recently in Bitch, Cosmonauts Avenue, and the anthology Dispatches From Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin. She is a 2021 Tin House Scholar and the recipient of residencies from Hedgebrook, The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and the Bloedel Reserve. Born in San Francisco, Michelle has lived in Portland, Oregon for many years where she curates the fairytale reading series All Kinds of Fur and lives with her family in a cottage where the forest meets the city. Juhea Kim is a writer, artist, and advocate based in Portland, Oregon. Her bestselling debut novel Beasts of a Little Land was named a finalist for the 2022 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a Best Book of 2021 by Harper’s Bazaar, Real Simple, Ms., and Portland Monthly. Her writing has been published in Granta, Slice, The Massachusetts Review, Zyzzyva, Guernica, Catapult, Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, Sierra Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the founder and editor ofPeaceful Dumpling, an online magazine at the intersection of sustainable lifestyle and ecological literature. She has received fellowship support from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. She earned her BA in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University.
Transcribe →Stacey Abrams (Rebroadcast)
Jun 1500:56:59Tap to summarizeStacey Abrams is probably best-known as a politician and political organizer; she the first Black woman in U.S. history to become the gubernatorial nominee of a major political party. Abrams has launched multiple nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies, with a longstanding focus on voter registration and voters’ rights. What you might not know is that Abrams has published 17 books in the last 25 years, including thrillers, romance novels, children’s books, memoir, and more. She started writing novels while in law school, and her new book is the thriller “Coded Justice,” which is about a topic on everyone’s minds these days: AI. Abrams was interviewed by the host of OPB’s Think Out Loud, Dave Miller, at the book festival. They discuss her early choice to use a pen name (Selena Montgomery) and the importance of community and having a team. Their warm, wide-ranging conversation reveals Abrams’s deep curiosity and immense intellect. One thing that really struck me is when Abrams talks about the relationship between her author life and her political life; she says, “Good policy is storytelling.” Stacey Abrams is a New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur, and political leader. She served as Minority Leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, and she was the first black woman to become gubernatorial nominee for a major party in United States history. Abrams has launched multiple nonprofit organizations devoted to democracy protection, voting rights, and effective public policy. She has also cofounded successful companies, including a financial services firm, an energy and infrastructure consulting firm, and the media company, Sage Works Productions, Inc. Abrams’s latest novel is titled Coded Justice. Dave Miller is the host of Oregon Public Broadcasting’s daily talk show, “Think Out Loud.” Before coming to OPB, Dave was the senior producer of “Open Source,” a nationally syndicated radio show based at the NPR affiliate station WGBH in Boston. He began his radio career as a documentary producer at Sound Portraits Productions and StoryCorps. From 2008 to 2011, he worked as the online host of the show. His stories have aired on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” “Morning Edition” and “Weekend Edition Saturday.” Dave graduated from Harvard University with a degree in English.
Transcribe →Marjane Satrapi
Jun 801:12:39Tap to summarizeThis episode, we bring you Marjane Satrapi. She gave this talk on April 7, 2008, just about one year after the film adaptation of her comic Persepolis had been featured at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated feature. Sastrapi’s death was announced on June 4, 2026. President Emmanual Macron of France said in the announcement, “Her passing marks the loss of a leading figure in French culture and a freedom-loving artist whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international acclaim.” Satrapi was an Iranian born French author and film director and is considered one of the greatest contemporary graphic novelists. Her work includes critically acclaimed and canonical books Persepolis and Persepolis 2, graphic narratives which both feature a protagonist, Marji, whose life parallels Satrapi’s. The books follow Marji from a childhood in Iran to spanning some of the most intense years of contemporary Iranian history during the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, with Marji leaving the country as a teenager to study in Europe, returning to Tehran for a period before eventually setting in Paris. Satrapi was an Iranian women, working in France, and became one the bestselling writers & artists in the United States. The specifics of her story are of course, unique to her, but like great storytellers she connected with millions of readers because of the universal nature of her work. In addition to Persepolis and Persepolis 2, she wrote several children’s books and other graphic novels, and she directed several feature films, including 2019’s “Radioactive,” about the life of Marie Curie, adapted from the graphic novel by Lauren Redniss and starring Rosamund Pike. Though she continued living in Paris, she remained an activist against Iran’s Islamic regime, in particular protesting the restrictions on women. She said, “We artists must be humble but doing nothing is worse, being indifferent is worse. In this talk, Satrapi is wry, ironic and occasionally sarcastic. She references the influence of Persian miniatures and Art Speigelman’s Pulitzer Prize winning graphic narrative Maus – the first comic ever to win the Pulitzer Prize. I use the work “comic” here instead of graphic novel intentionally since Satrapi rejects the term “graphic novel” as pretentious. To the end, she is grounded and funny, whether she is talking about American culture in Tehran in the 1970s or the personal challenges she faced as an artist working for the first time on film and being forced to collaborate with a huge group of people – a process she at first disliked, then came to appreciate. “Any intellectual and any artistic work, by definition, is an anti-fanatic work. Fanaticism presses on the button of emotion…When you make an intellectual and artistic work— when you don’t pretend that you have the answers, but you only have questions to ask—when you make this work, for the person who listens to or reads you, not only do you ask them to be smart, but to work—to try to find the answers themselves.” Marjane Satrapi is an Iranian-born French graphic novelist, illustrator, film director, and children’s book author. She was born in Iran in 1969 and grew up in Tehran in a middle-class Iranian family, attending the Lycee Francais until she left for Vienna and, later, Strasbourg to study Decorative Arts. She eventually moved to France, where she now lives with her husband, Mattias Ripa. Satrapi has worked on many graphic novels and animated films, but she attracted worldwide attention for her autobiographical comic series Persepolis. The work chronicles her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe. In 2007, Persepolis was adapted into a critically acclaimed animated film of the same name that received over 25 major international award nominations and over 15 major international awards.
Transcribe →Taylor Byas & m mick powell in conversation with Jae Nichelle (Rebroadcast)
Jun 1Tap to summarizeWe’re taking it back to the 2025 Portland Book Festival this weekend, with poets m. mick powell and Taylor Byas, and moderater Jae Nichelle. Taylor Byas’s second collection, Resting Bitch Face, uses watching and surveillance to explore Black female subjectivity. Byas engages with multiple art forms — painting, film, sculpture, and photographs – to explore the perspectives of artist and muse, of watcher and watched. Taylor is in conversation with m. mick powell, whose debut poetry collection Dead Girl Cameo: A Love Stroy in Poems features of chorus of pop stars – Aaliyah, Whitney Houston, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, and more – in an exploration of grief, sexuality, and celebrity. Powell refers to the collection as a documentary, and it includes imagery, speculative verse, and more. Poet Jae Nichelle leads a conversation that starts from the prompt “pop culture poetry.” Engaging with pop culture, as these collections do, is an act of engaging with the cultural moment. Done well, it doesn’t “date” the work, but creates a time capsule – a documentary. Both collections are deeply researched, and Taylor and mick discuss their relationships to art, scholarship, and commerce, and the interplay between those different aspects of publishing this particular collections. In the conversation, first we’ll hear m. mick powell read the title poem of their debut collection, Dead Girl Cameo, followed by a reading by Taylor Byas of the title poem of Resting Bitch Face and then a conversation between mick, Taylor, and the moderator, Jae. A heads up – there’s some mature language that may not be appropriate for all listeners, and you’ll hear some bleeps in the opening poem. Taylor Byas is an award-winning poet and a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her poetry collection I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times won the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Ohioana Book Award, the CHIRBy Award, and the BCALA Best Poetry Honor. m mick powell is a queer Black Cabo Verdean femme, poet, artist, Aries, and the author of DEAD GIRL CAMEO (One World Books, 2025) and threesome in the last Toyota Celica & other circus tricks, winner of the 2023 Host Publications Chapbook Prize. An assistant professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut, mick enjoys chasing waterfalls and being in love. Louisiana-born Jae Nichelle (she/her) is the author of God Themselves (Andrews McMeel, 2023) and the chapbook The Porch (As Sanctuary) (YesYes Books, 2019). She was a finalist for a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and won the inaugural John Lewis Writing Award in poetry from the Georgia Writers Association. Her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2020 (University of Virginia Press, 2020), the Washington Square Review, The Offing, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere. She believes in all of our collective ability to contribute to radical change.
Transcribe →Tracy Kidder
May 2601:09:51Tap to summarizeIn this episode we feature one of the giants of story telling and of long form journalism, Tracy Kidder. Kidder passed away at the age of 80 in March 2026, and so we are sharing this recording from 2011 as a way for us to celebrate his life and work, and all that he has given to readers. Spanning over 50 years, Kidder’s career began at the Iowa Writers Workshop where he enrolled in 1974 after military service in the Vietnam war. He began with aspirations to be a novelist but soon found that he had talent for seeing the through line of the lives of the people all around him. And so for his entire storied career, Kidder wrote compellingly about ordinary people from all walks of life, including carpenters, home builders, computer programmers, Haitian doctors, schoolchildren, and nursing home residents – just to name a few. Along the way he earned a Pulitzer, a National Book Award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, for his ground breaking books like The Soul of a New Machine and Mountain Beyond Mountains. His body of work included dozens and dozens of articles, and twelve books, which came to redefine an entire genre of nonfiction. He joined us in 2011 after the publication of a book called Strength In What Remains, and he tells the story of learning to write in Iowa, and then his apprenticeship turned life-long professional relationship with Richard Todd who was one of the Atlantic Magazine’s famed editors. It’s an extraordinary story in which Kidder reveals his mistakes, uncertainties, and vulnerabilities as much as his successes. And he does so with self effacing humor and quiet wisdom. This is a must-listen for every aspiring writer, and for every reader who wants deeper insight into the creative process and to understand how many of the stories that have come to define modern journalism were made. Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard and the University of Iowa. He won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. He is the author of Rough Sleepers, A Truck Full of Money, Good Prose (with Richard Todd), Strength in What Remains, My Detachment, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Home Town, Old Friends, Among Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New Machine. Kidder passed away in 2026.
Transcribe →Portland Monuments Project: Future
May 1800:51:50Tap to summarizeThe City of Portland is engaged in a national dialogue about public art, history, monuments, and memorials. With support from the Mellon Foundation, the Portland Monuments Project is a multi-year project with the goal of deciding on the future of seven monuments that were damaged, toppled, or removed following demonstrations in Portland in 2020-2021. Portland Monuments Project aims to foster public dialogue to reimagine and transform the purpose of monuments and memorials in Portland. This episode is part three, the final installment of a three-part series as part of the Portland Monuments Project. This week we explore the city’s potential futures; episode one looked to the past, and episode two explored the present. Literary Arts is involved in this project because storytelling is at the heart of our mission, and monuments tell a story about who we were, who we are, what we value, and who we aspire to be. They tell stories about different communities and the stories they tell are dynamic, in so much as our community is changing, time is passing, and the context for these fixed objects and changes around them. In this episode, we’ll think about the monuments we need. We’ll hear from Literary Arts executive director Andrew Proctor, whose voice you might recognize as the other co-host of this show. We have a conversation with Portland writers Mitchell S. Jackson and Renée Watson about who they think should be honored with a monument in Portland. And we’ll hear from the people of Portland about the monuments they want to see and the stories they want to be told about this city, where we’ve been, and where it’s going. Our guide for today’s episode is Archive Project editor and producer, Matthew Workman.
Transcribe →Portland Monuments Project: Present
May 1100:51:46Tap to summarizeThe City of Portland is engaged in a national dialogue about public art, history, monuments, and memorials. With support from the Mellon Foundation, the Portland Monuments Project is a multi-year project with the goal of deciding on the future of seven monuments that were damaged, toppled, or removed following demonstrations in Portland in 2020-2021 by fostering public dialogue to reimagine and transform the purpose of monuments and memorials in Portland. This episode is part two of a three-part series as part of the Portland Monument Project. The first episode revisited the city’s past, part two will look at the present, and the culminating episode explores what may come to fruition in the future. Literary Arts is involved in this project because storytelling is at the heart of our mission, and monuments tell a story about who we were, who we are, what we value, and who we aspire to be. They tell stories about different communities and the stories they tell are dynamic, in so much as our community is changing, time is passing and the context for these fixed objects changes around them. In this episode, we’re tracing the path of a monument that went from a guerilla artwork, to a museum piece, and will soon be a monument again. Join us as we travel from the top of Mount Tabor to the mouth of the Columbia River to learn more about this particular monument and its subject – York the Explorer – from art curators, historians, and some nice people enjoying an afternoon in the park. Our guide for today’s episode is Archive Project editor and producer, Matthew Workman.
Transcribe →